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Mars and the Science Programme the Case for Mars Polar Science

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Mars and the Science Programme the Case for Mars Polar Science Mars Polar Science White Paper, 5 August 2019 Mars and the Science Programme The case for Mars Polar Science Nicolas Thomas, Patricio Becerra Isaac Smith Space Research and Planetology Division Earth and Space Science and Engineering Physikalisches Inst. Lassonde School of Engineering University of Bern York University Switzerland Canada Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Tel: +1 416‐736‐2100 x 77703 Tel: +41 31 631 4406 Page 1 | 16 Mars Polar Science White Paper, 5 August 2019 Abstract Current plans within ESA for the future investigation of Mars (after the ExoMars programme) are centred around participation in the Mars Sample Return (MSR) programme led by NASA. This programme is housed within the Human and Robotic Exploration (HRE) directorate of ESA. This paper focuses on the important scientific objectives for the investigation of Mars outside the present HRE planning. The achievement of these objectives by Science Directorate missions is entirely consistent with ESA’s Science Programme. We illustrate this with a theme centred around study of the Martian polar caps and the investigation of recent (Amazonian) climate change produced by well‐established oscillations in Mars’ orbital parameters. Deciphering the record of climate contained within the polar caps would allow us to learn about the climatic evolution of another planet over the past few to hundreds of millions of years, and also addresses the more general goal of investigating volatile‐ related dynamic processes in the Solar System. 1. Background Based on the last 10 years, ESA’s science directorate can expect to launch 4‐5 missions to Solar System targets within the 2033‐2050 timeframe (not including Mission of Opportunity contributions to missions of other agencies and other directorates such as HRE). Several mission concepts are regularly discussed as possible future missions including an Ice Giant orbiter, sample return missions to a cometary nucleus, the Moon or asteroids, a Venus atmospheric probe, contributions to NASA missions to Titan and Enceladus, and asteroid/main‐belt comet landers. In this document we wish to emphasize that the Science Programme has a significant role to play in the investigation of Mars, and that goals distinctly separate from those of the HRE directorate, can be formulated. We show this by presenting a case for a Mars Polar Science theme within Voyage 2050. The Science Programme of ESA (SCI) was instrumental in placing Europe into the global Mars community through Mars Express. This mission recovered science originally initiated by European investigators as part of the Russian Mars ’96 mission, and resulted in a strong European presence in the international community that has continued until today. This has led to active instrument provision and participation in missions, the most recent example being NASA’s InSight. The European experiments on InSight had their genesis in Science Programme studies of InterMarsnet (including studies before this of NetLander; Lognonne et al., 2019), which ultimately lost out to Planck in the ESA SCI selection process. European participations in NASA missions such as Mars Pathfinder, Mars Polar Lander, Phoenix, and Curiosity further indicate the scientific enthusiasm for studying Mars through landed static and mobile missions. The initiation of the ExoMars programme, through studies carried out in the late 1990s, began a change in direction within ESA. ExoMars is part of the optional programme and is housed within the Human and Robotic Exploration directorate (HRE). This mission, which is still intended to launch in 2020, will attempt to drill into the sub‐surface of Mars to test for extinct and/or extant life. It is the most comprehensive astrobiology mission to be launched by any agency so far. As part of the programme, HRE also launched the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO). This mission was primarily foreseen as a communications orbiter for landed assets (including the ExoMars rover) but available mass was subsequently used to carry scientific payload. This included the Colour and Stereo Surface Imaging System (CaSSIS) instrument led by Switzerland, and the NOMAD spectrometer led by Belgium. The Science Programme contributes to TGO by providing small but significant levels of funding to support science operations. Together with the continued operation of Mars Express, this is currently the only Page 2 | 16 Mars Polar Science White Paper, 5 August 2019 contribution of SCI to the scientific exploration of Mars and, at the time of writing, there are no plans to expand this, to our knowledge. The situation in Europe is thus one in which HRE is now leading an optional Mars programme, and should ExoMars be successful, ESA (through HRE) will seek to participate in MSR as a joint international mission with NASA (and possibly other agencies). This mission could be a precursor to the manned exploration of Mars, which would be consistent with the perceived aims of the HRE directorate. However, there are numerous targets and investigative goals at Mars that are of major scientific significance but that are not easily coupled to MSR, and are unlikely to be a goal of the HRE programme. In the following, we will provide an example of such targets and goals: the study of the Martian Polar Caps. Our aim here is to voice the interest of the community in furthering studies of the Martian polar regions, to propose that the Science Programme remain open to these ideas and to ensure that competitive, Mars‐related, science mission proposals are welcome. In addition, Mars‐related missions may re‐enter NASA New Frontiers planning in the near future through their next Decadal Survey (they are currently excluded from the New Frontiers‐class Announcements of Opportunity following statements in the previous Decadal Survey), and an ESA SCI participation in a Mars‐related New Frontiers mission would be scientifically valuable. 2. Scientific justification for a Mars Polar Science theme within ESA SCI In a broad sense, the interaction of Mars’ polar regions (Figure 1) with the Martian planetary climate system can be split into three distinct timescales. The seasonal polar caps are produced by the annual mass transfer of CO2 between the atmosphere and the surface. These caps exist only during winter and comprise a 1‐2 metre thick layer of mostly CO2 ice. The polar residual caps that remain in summer months are composed of H2O ice deposits in the north (the north pole residual cap ‐ NPRC) and CO2 ice in the south (SPRC), and they interact with the current Martian climate on timescales of decades to 100s of years (Byrne et al. 2009), growing to at most a few metres in the north and up to ten meters thick in the south. Finally, the Polar Layered Deposits (PLD) are kilometre‐thick stratified sheets of nearly pure water ice (Grima et al., 2009), with small amounts of dust, and they record climate oscillations, in an analogous way to terrestrial polar ice sheets, from the last few to hundreds of millions of years of Martian history. The polar environment therefore comprises geological information on the current state of Martian climate, as well as its relatively recent history. Deep understanding of the connection between the polar deposits and the Martian climate is necessary to understand the Martian climate system as a whole, and is only possible through missions that are dedicated to studying this record in detail. a. The seasonal deposits Mars’ seasonal polar caps buffer the CO2 atmosphere of Mars as first described by Leighton and Murray (1966). Surface pressure changes of around 25% occur over the annual cycle as a result of mass transfer between the polar caps and the atmosphere with CO2 freezing out onto the polar caps in winter and subliming in spring and summer. Page 3 | 16 Mars Polar Science White Paper, 5 August 2019 Figure 1 MOLA topographic maps of the polar regions of Mars with a few important geographic locations indicated. In the south‐polar region, a MOC image of the SPRC overlays the topographic map. Parallels are drawn every 5°. This leads to numerous small‐scale processes that are active and dynamic on seasonal timescales. Figure 2 shows an example of the types of activity commonly seen in the southern hemisphere (Thomas et al., 2010). During southern winter, CO2 condenses slowly onto the southern polar cap and produces a roughly 1 m thick layer of translucent CO2 ice. As the Sun rises in southern Martian spring, sunlight penetrates the layer and illuminates the surface below. The CO2 layer is opaque at infrared wavelengths, inhibiting heat escape, which causes sublimation of the CO2 layer from its base, resulting in gas pressures that force openings and cracks in the CO2 layer and release CO gas in a geyser‐ like process. Pressure release is accompanied by dust transport leading to dark deposits on the surface of the ice (Figure 2 top left). This mechanism scours the surface beneath the ice layer and produces so‐called araneiform (spider‐like) Figure 2 Evidence of gas jet activity in the "Inca City" region of the southern polar cap (~81°S). The right hand panel shows the full surface structures (as seen in to the top image of the area (taken by NASA’s High Resolution Imaging right of the high resolution images. This Science Experiment (HiRISE). A white box identifies the area shown mechanism (the Kieffer hypothesis) was in more detail in the left two panels. These two images were taken at different times. Black blotches and lineaments appear in spring first described by Kieffer et al. (2006), and as a result of the Kieffer mechanism for producing CO2 gas modelling work has placed constraints on geysers. the physics of the gas emission (e.g. Thomas Page 4 | 16 Mars Polar Science White Paper, 5 August 2019 et al., 2011).
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